A
Request For Comments, or,
RFC which details how the
Internet Relay Chat protocol is to
operate. It was written by J.
Oikarinen and D.
Reed in May of 1993. Since then, the face of
IRC has changed drastically, with so many
extensions or downright
modifications occuring to the IRC
protocol (such as seen on
DALnet), that some believe this RFC needs a
replacement.
Many people believe that IRC3 will solve many of the current problems of the IRC protocol, including multi-linked servers, trusted servers with user information that need not propagate to each other server, nick and channel ownership.
However, like IPv6, IRC3 seems a long ways away. How can it be safely deployed without disrupting everyone?
It's been seven years already, we're long overdue.